Democrat incumbent Dave Loebsack faced off against Republican challenger Christopher Peters during a public forum on Monday in the race for Iowa’s second district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The two occasionally agreed on issues such as lowering costs by opening up competition for pharmaceutical drugs and reforming immigration. But they frequently disagreed in the big-picture issue of the role the federal government should play in regulations and public funding.
During the forum, which was co-hosted by the League of Women Voters of Johnson County and the Johnson County Task Force on Aging, the candidates answered questions from the audience and from the moderators, Kathie Obradovich, of the Des Moines Register and Dean Borg, host of Iowa Press on Iowa Public Television.
Loebsack has held the seat since taking office in 2007 in the district, which covers much of southeast Iowa, including Johnson County. Peters, a Libertarian-leaning candidate, runs a surgical clinic in Coralville and served as an Army general surgeon.
Elder issues
Among the first questions asked was about aging-in-place and many questions circled back to elder care issues, including questions about Medicare, Social Security and the cost of prescription drugs.
Peters said he supports efforts to provide care and services for those wishing to stay in their homes, citing his 88-year-old father who still lives in his home in Lawrence, Kansas.
“Funding is the challenge,” he said. “More needs to be community-based and financed. I’m suspicious that the federal government will do any more.”
Loebsack cited his support for funding for things like the Meals on Wheels program, which provides food and safety checks to seniors. He added that he was proud to say his sloppy joe recipe is in the program’s cookbook.
Loebsack said he didn’t plan on supporting a decrease of benefits or a change in retirement age for Social Security, saying he hoped economic growth and getting people back to work would make up for projected shortages.
Peters said he would consider structural reforms to Social Security, including raising the current Social Security cap — currently, only the first $118,500 of a person’s wages are taxed for Social Security, so people who earn high wages pay a smaller portion of their income than people who fall into lower income brackets. The precise cap varies annually based on inflation.
Peters also suggested reconsidering the retirement age and encouraging people who can work longer to do so.
Both candidates agreed that over-regulation of the medical industry can make healthcare more expensive for consumers and agreed that greater competition for pharmaceutical drugs — either by opening up access to medications from abroad or by pushing to approve generic formulas — could help to lower prices.
Role of federal government
Even on topics where the two candidates largely agreed, they parted ways on the issue of how much involvement federal government should have.
“I’m a big believer in federalism,” Peters said. “There is a certain narrow realm that the federal government, according to the Constitution, does have power over. They’re not doing a good job of it right now because they are distracted with so many other things.”
For example, although both candidates agreed on the existence of climate change and the role humans have played in contributing to warming global temperatures, Peters argued that adaptation and mitigation efforts should come from the local or state level. Loebsack, on the other hand, touted his efforts to support things like the federal wind production tax credit and solar investment tax credit.
According to a recently published Iowa Climate Change Statement, one of the impacts Iowa has seen from climate change is an increased frequency of intense rain. Cedar Rapids, which got hit by flooding in 2008, recently withstood another flood scare, spending about $6 million on temporary flood protections. The city has plans for permanent flood protections that will cost an estimated $600 million from city, state and federal funds, but the promised $73 million in federal funding for east side flood walls is still in limbo and hasn’t been allocated. In part, that is because of a cost-benefit formula the Army Corps of Engineers uses to assign priority levels to projects.
When talk turned to federal funding for flood protection projects in Cedar Rapids — which is technically outside the district — Loebsack pointed to his efforts to push for the Corps of Engineers to place a higher priority on Cedar Rapids flood protection.
Peters, however, said the money needs to come from local and state sources, and not rely on federal funds
“We need to take care of a lot of these problems on a more local, state basis,” Peters said. “At the local level we have local experience and local knowledge. When goes to D.C. it’s not a surprise that money is not coming back where we want it when we want it.”
Term limits
During his race against Loebsack, a five-term representative, Peters has said he supports term limits and has promised to serve no more than 10 years if he were elected himself. However, he said that as a freshman representative he would likely not be able to drum up enough support to pass the required constitutional amendment to set term limits in Congress.
Loebsack first took office following the 2006 election when he unseated a 30-year incumbent, moderate Republican Jim Leach.
“He’s been there longer than I want him to stay,” Peters said of Loebsack.
Peters pointed to the power of incumbents as an overarching issue. Reelection rates for the U.S. House of Representatives have hovered around 90 percent since 1964, according to Open Secrets data.
Incumbents often have larger war chests and better name recognition than their competitors. According to the campaign finance data available through the Federal Election Commission, Loebsack reported having over $800,000 cash on hand at the end of June. Peters reported roughly $32,000.
Loebsack cited his victory over Leach as evidence that there was hope for challengers. He also cited the importance of tenure for representatives hoping to serve on influential committees. He currently serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles healthcare, energy and trade policies as well as environmental and consumer issues.
Immigration
Both candidates spoke about reforming the immigration system.
“It’s clear that most immigrants are a net economic benefit to our country,” Peters said. “That’s certainly true for people who come here legally. It’s also net true for those who come here illegally.”
He said sending people back who have lived in the United States for most of their lives didn’t make sense to him.
Loebsack also said he supported immigration reform, including past efforts to get the House to take up immigration reform legislation passed by Senate in 2013, but those efforts were rejected and the bill never came up for a vote.
“Certainly when it comes to the DREAMer population, if they are here and going to school and working in our society we need to make sure they stay here,” Loebsack said.
Closing
In closing, both candidates shared their views for the future.
“Unless we make some real, structural changes, we’re going to be leaving behind a much larger mess than any of us want to leave behind for our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren,” Peters said.
Loebsack said his goal was to continue working to make sure Americans had opportunities to get an education and pursue a better life for their families.
“I want to make sure that those who are in the middle class stay in the middle class and those who aren’t can get into it. That’s what this is about to me, folks,” he said.
